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- Convenors:
-
Dominic Boyer
(Rice University)
Cymene Howe (Rice University)
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- Chair:
-
Dominic Boyer
(Rice University)
- Discussant:
-
Cymene Howe
(Rice University)
- Format:
- Traditional Open Panel
Short Abstract:
In dialogue with contemporary AI techniques, this panel explores the possibilities of collaborative multimodal ethnography to connect different fieldsites and fieldknowledges through the experimental practice of remixing ethnographic artifacts.
Long Abstract:
Both multimodality and collaboration have become transformational vectors in the epistemic practices of STS, anthropology and related human sciences. This panel explores the possibilities of collaborative multimodal ethnography. Typically, multimodal collaborations occur within the context of ethnographic research projects undertaken by artist-ethnographers (e.g., the Ethnographic Terminalia Collective) or where artistic collaborators come into dialogue with ethnographers to help them realize new expressive potentials (e.g., Anna Tsing’s Golden Snail Opera). In both cases, projects are grounded in direct field research experience with media projects broadcast outwards. Building upon these works, this panel wonders what could happen if ethnographic multimodality were to become more participatory and open-ended. What would happen, for example, if multimodal ethnography were opened up to collaborations beyond those intimately familiar with the original fieldwork situation? What if the multimodal expressions of different fieldsites and fieldknowledges came into dialogue with one another? The experimental idea that guides this panel is that of the remix, a multimodal technique with a deep and diverse history in expressive practice. Through remix experiments, collaborators can take their partners' ethnographic artifacts and "lay down tracks" to create new ethnographic assemblages—for example, an essay becomes a play, or a film becomes a painting—that supplement and reimagine their originals with attentions and concerns originating from a different field situation. Could an artist-ethnographer discover something new in their own research by engaging its remix? We undertake this experiment in full awareness that AI technologies like large language models (LLM) offer automated, extractivist remix strategies that are becoming very popular prosthetics for creating seemingly unique text and image assemblages. Some of the remix practices we envision engage AI techniques, others are more artisanal and experiential in form.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Dominic Boyer (Rice University) Craig Campbell Campbell (University of Texas at Austin) Cymene Howe (Rice University)
Short abstract:
In the spirit of this panel’s effort to think about the analytical and representational capacities of multimodal collaboration in the era of AI, we propose a multimodal remix experiment based in our shared interest in climate communication.
Long abstract:
In the spirit of this panel’s effort to think about the analytical and representational capacities of multimodal collaboration in the era of AI, we propose a multimodal remix experiment based in our shared interest in climate communication. We begin with two existing projects. The first is Campbell’s Greeting Cards for the Anthropocene, which explores the greeting card as an everyday cultural form with a tradition of helping people work through difficult feelings. Imagining a space in the greeting card section for “climate catastrophe,” this project leans on the expertise of scholars and creatives to generate, activate, and publicize the work of scientists and others engaging in the problems associated with anthropogenic climate change. The second project is Howe and Boyer’s Sister Cities of the Anthropocene initiative, which seeks to make visible emergent Anthropocene connectivities, such as the transformation of cryospheres into hydrospheres that distantly connects communities losing ice to communities gaining water in the form of sea level rise. The program hopes to foster new kinds of affective and epistemic relations between places experiencing Anthropocene vectors (e.g., drought, wildfires, air pollution and similar phenomena). In the remix phase of the project, Campbell will explore creating AI-assisted postcards related to the Sister Cities project, while Howe and Boyer wish to develop an Anthropocene playing card deck inspired by the Greeting Cards project.
Gretchen Bakke (Humboldt University, Berlin) Marina Peterson (University of Texas at Austin)
Short abstract:
In this presentation we present several analog remixes, largely accomplished with paper and scissors together with basic crafting skills (weaving, folding). Particular attention will be paid to the form of remix afforded by folding and weaving.
Long abstract:
In this presentation we present several analog remixes, largely accomplished with paper and scissors together with basic crafting skills (weaving, folding) including: (1) A large woven paper mat in the form of a tide, that interweaves essays on Sky (Peterson) and Sea (Bakke). This piece is designed partially at random, and partially using the found poetry techniques of Katy Didden; (2) A set of three en-folded books that layer paragraph length prose poems by both authors together under a single cover; and (3) experiments in building words from an ongoing editorial project organized around the periodic table of the elements. The authors will present these projects, exploring how they differ from other modes of (longstanding) collaboration. Particular attention will be paid to the form of remix afforded by folding and weaving, along with the work of crafting contexts in which they can be encountered and engaged with.
Gretchen Bakke is presenting, Marina Peterson is co-author
Emil André Røyrvik (Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)) Marianne Brodersen (Nord University)
Short abstract:
This paper explores a process of collaborative "remixing" of two independent multimodal ethnographic projects. It draws out the main principles such a process of ethnographic co-creation are based upon and the affordances it provides in terms of generative theorizing.
Long abstract:
Both multimodal and collaborative forms of ethnography have become increasingly central to the discipline of anthropology. This paper explores how the process of “remixing” two initially unconnected multimodal ethnographic projects evoked new forms of generative theorizing. The two projects in question were first the project “Unstories” (Giordano & Pierotti 2020), which is a theatrical performance project centred around the issues of migration in the Mediterranean. The second project was drawn from my own long-term ethnographic relationship with Roma people in Sliven, Bulgaria. Both projects devised separately a multimodal ethnographic object that the other partner in turn freely “remixed” into a new ethnographic object. I offered a photo collage titled “The sorrows of suspense” highlighting the extended liminality of post-communist existence with its suspended promises of western democracy and the market economy. The two parties then came together to present and discuss their original objects, the remixes and what the process and series of objects afforded in terms of new theoretical and methodological ideas. Although the fieldsites and field knowledges were very different, the remixing connection and remaking of the original objects, as well as the separate and joint reflections on the process, provided us with forms of multimodal theorizing that were quite unexpected in its creative and conceptual generativity. The paper draws out these affordances and explores why the remixing process was not only an AI-like recombination of existing elements, but a truly synergetic process of co-creation that enabled new forms of theorizing.
Steffen Köhn (Aarhus University) Kenni Eilert (Aarhus University)
Short abstract:
We will collaboratively remix two current research projects: A microphenomenological study of altruism and democracy in Danish welfare work, and a documentary remake of a classic cyberpunk short story translated to Cuba's offline context.
Long abstract:
As researchers and teachers who are intimately involved with the Master's track in multimodal anthropology at Aarhus University, we are both fascinated by the idea of creating new ethnographic assemblages and transmedia reimaginations of our current research projects. Keni Hede will bring to the panel several microphenomenological interviews he conducted as part of his PhD project Ildsjæl: A Multimodal Study of Altruism, Bildung, and Mutable Perceptions of Democracy in Danish Welfare Work" which explores encounters between Islam, the Danish National Church, and the Danish welfare state. in the Gellerup neighborhood in western Aarhus. As his research participants in these taped interviews wrestle with verbalizing intense feelings of love and faith, he is excited to see how this material could translate into other modes of representation. Steffen Köhn will bring material from a video installation that intertwines two narrative planes: the dystopian imagination of William Gibson’s Johnny Mnemonic (1981), one of the earliest cyberpunk short stories, and the real-world Cuban “offline internet”, the physical data distribution network El Paquete Semanal. While the work, as a "documentary remake", already constitutes some sort of remix, the work offers many points of connection to current discourses on technological sovereignty, surveillance capitalism, or the anthropology of the future.
George Marcus (University of California irvine)
Short abstract:
The application of evolving AI technology to Ethnographic Fieldnotes and to the Raw Materials of. Historical Research
Long abstract:
This presentation extends a collaboration between Marcus, an anthropologist, and. Seed, an historian, that applies evolving AI technology to the raw materials of ethnographic research (Marcus's fieldnotes from career initiating research in Tonga) and Seed's current research on the origins of celestial navigation and Portuguese exploration.
What unifies this presentation is an interest in the relevance of the application of Bakhtin's writings on the dialogic, a key source of theoretical interest in the era before AI , to current possibilities in AI applications. The focus will be on one case example from ethnography, and one from historical research, collaboratively worked through.